Calico Life Sciences LLC is an Americanbiotechnology company with a focus on thebiology of aging, attempting to devise interventions that may enable people to lead longer and healthier lives. It is a subsidiary ofAlphabet Inc.
Calico, short for the California Life Company,[2][3] was announced on September 18, 2013, prior toGoogle's restructuring and was founded by formerGV CEOBill Maris.[4][5] In Google's 2013 Founders Letter,Larry Page described Calico as a company focused on "health, well-being, andlongevity."[6] It was incorporated into Alphabet with Google's other sister divisions in 2015.[7][8]
At the end of 2017 and the beginning of 2018, Calico lost two top scientists; in December 2017Hal Barron, MD, its head of R&D, left forGlaxoSmithKline, and in March 2018 chief computing officerDaphne Koller, who was leading theircomputational biology efforts, left to pursue a venture in applying machine learning techniques to drug design.[12][13][14]
In September 2014, Calico andAbbVie announced an R&D collaboration focused onaging and age-related diseases such asneurodegeneration andcancer.[15] The partnership was extended in 2021[16] by which time the companies had committed to invest more than $1 billion into the collaboration.[17][better source needed] AbbVie terminated the collaboration in November 2025, a few months after the companies announced the failure offosigotifator in a Phase II/III trial forALS.[18][19]
In 2015, theBroad Institute of MIT and Harvard announced a partnership with Calico to "advance research on age-related diseases and therapeutics",[20] a further partnership also was announced with theBuck Institute for Research on Aging.[21] Also in 2015, Calico announced a partnership withQB3 based on researching the biology of aging and identifying potential therapeutics for age-related diseases[22] and one withAncestryDNA based on conducting research into the genetics of human lifespan.[23]
In October 2023,Nature, a weekly British scientific journal, published preclinical research findings that showed ABBV-CLS-484, a PTPN2/N1phosphatase inhibitor being co-developed byAbbVie and Calico, provokes a potent dual response in cancer and immune cells only in mice.[24][25][26]
When Calico was formed, Google did not disclose many details, such as whether the company would focus on biology or information technology.[27] The company issued press releases about research partnerships, but not details regarding the results of its research or the specifics of what it was working on.[3][28] This led to frustration by researchers regarding Calico's secrecy[28] and questions as to whether Calico had produced any useful scientific advancements.[29] Calico said the business' purpose was to focus on long-term science not expected to garner results for 10 or more years, leaving nothing to report on in its first five years.[29]
